a game with little Java experience and in short time. So at the end I had both “Spaghetti” code and “Lasagna” code. Luckily for me, @FManga dropped me some precious help on nailing some nasty bugs and stupid mistakes.
No more space? Optimizations!
Sooner or later in Pokitto development, you’ll face the beauty of limited resources. Maybe beauty isn’t the best term, but like the checkout at your preferred online shop, after a compilation you’ll see that every little thing adds up and your cash is limited. So you go back to your shopping cart and look for things to trim. Especially if you really need to keep that expensive and cool intro animation you just received. After an initial moment of depression, it turned out there was some wasted memory with the sound samples used. Audio is very space-consuming, particularly when that nice crashing glass sound that you hear for a half second was gently fading out for a couple of seconds more, till it became a nearly inaudible whisper. Trimming the samples was still not enough. So I went deeper into asset optimization. The buildings now became composed of reusable little tiles, flipped randomly and patched with decorations.
Submission date!
The Jam’s submission date was October 31st, 2019. So the end of October, right? The announcement was made at the end of July and, believe me or not, for some strange reason I messed up the dates. For most of the competition I was convinced the submission was due before the end of September. I’m not sure how I misread the date, nor why I didn’t discover the error till the last week of September. @Vampirics was pushing on the game with ideas and great pixel art in a constant, high flow of interest. Only now I’m starting to get used to his kind of attitude in game development, so I was sure the time was running out and the game was behind schedule. The fun fact is that, after quickly wrapping this game up, we started working on our entry for the Jam (as Canabalto did not fit the theme). That other entry, Espresso Shoot won! Anyway, imagine my feelings when our “Art Director” came up with the 2-player mode idea, just a few days before what was supposed to be our release...
Two player mode
“Have you ever see the 2-player mode for Canabalto?”, he said, while sending me a link: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=A03rhUNTEM4 I’m not sure 2-player mode is official, but if possible, that seemed to make the game even better. I was both annoyed and curious, as I’d never played the game that way. It really added a great, local multiplayer, experience. The whole new logic is genius, and gave me a great vibe. Some video games really are a work of art. Finding a new way to
expand their dimension is magical. The only problem was: I had to implement it all in the shortest time possible! I had to change so much code, running the risk of breaking everything. In the end, we managed to do it and I’m proud of the way it turned out. It allowed me to have some fun moments with my kids. And for the crazy ones among you to have some really crazy ideas: build some kind of foot switch you can jump over, attach it to Pokitto’s PEX and control your character by stomping like a boss! Actually I’m not really sure why the intro came at the end, but it’s nice to put it here now. The beauty of this intro is something I really couldn’t hope to reach alone. I can say it’s simple, yet effective. I remember @ Vampirics endlessly pointing me to either adjust the background scroll speed, or to move the High Score text just 1 pixel away to better align with the ceiling. It has been a highly educational experience for me, and it taught me again the importance of teaming-up with the right people to make a project. My completed vs unfinished projects ratio has risen to the stars, after I finally met some great people in the Pokitto community, bringing with that the satisfaction and gratification of having published some good games.
Special thanks
Vampirics: Teamwork really works, good productive time, and passionat game maker. FManga: Once again a giant with comfortable shoulders.
D!
ON ISHE I S MIS OMPL ACC
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